Infiltrating the Art World through Photography: Petr Stembera's 1970s Networks

The reception of 1970s Czech performance art was influenced by a unique set of conditions. Typically, only a handful of friends attended live events in Prague, while the art piece had to cross the state borders through photographic documentation in order to find a broader secondary audience. The missing institutional footing was therefore partially substituted by reproductions in foreign magazines and photographs distributed for exhibitions abroad. Petr Stembera was one of the few figures to draw attention to Czech art outside of the country. He would send photographic documentation to artists and curators who orchestrated his representation at many foreign exhibitions. As I demonstrate with concrete examples, he helped create a network which gave his activities the status of art. However, when performance art became an established part of the international art scene and institutionalised itself late in the 1970s, he concluded that it was best to quit the practice altogether.